Of QP Publications and International Relations

Two new pieces from QP authors.  First, Michael Flynn has a solo-authored piece in an upcoming Foreign Policy Analysis that has an early view avaible. Abstract:  How does political competition among domestic actors influence foreign policy choice? Studies examining these questions often focus on the role of economic or partisan interests, and how they influence the preferences of decision makers who are subject to electoral institutions and pressures of their constituents. Less attention has been paid to how the preferences of other influential but unelected actors influence state behavior. I examine the influence of one such group by looking at Continue reading Of QP Publications and International Relations

The Danger of Online Articles

I listen to several podcasts each work during my daily commute to and from the office.  One podcast, the Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU), has several segments each week, with a few discussing scientific findings.  My favorite is a game for the panel where three scientific research findings are offered and the panelists guess which one is false. That is, a finding is made up by the host; often, it is in the opposite direction of a recent study. The other two findings are "science;" a result that has been published in a recent journal. Two episodes ago (#330, 11/12/2011), Continue reading The Danger of Online Articles

Music and Academia: The Role of Colons in Titles

This post is written by Ben Farrer whose account is currently down. I’m starting to strongly dislike academic titles that take the form: “Metaphor For x: Actual Description Of x”, or similar, and am venting my frustration with a game. As an example of the type I dislike, one of my own undergraduate essays was entitled: “Holding out for a Hero? The Roles of Lincoln and of Slaves in Emancipation”. A poor effort on my part, but you get the picture. I’ve been guilty of using this template regularly myself, but I’m beginning to believe that it falls down on Continue reading Music and Academia: The Role of Colons in Titles

Quick Link: The Top 10 Worst Graphs in Science

Karl Bowman offers a list of the top 10 worst graphs in the scientific literature. Bowman not only critiques each graph, but also offers suggestions to improve the graph in the future. For this list, the social sciences were not included. I imagine that we have some relatively uninformative displays in our articles, but I have not seen a comparable list for our discipline—perhaps due to the obvious disincentives that exist for compiling such a list together.     

Scribtex: online collaboration for LaTeX

Michael Flynn and I have been discussing a new project based on recent data we have discovered and our mutual academic interests.  Given that we both have become LaTeX savvy, I was hoping to find a convenient way for us to collaborate without using the archaic system of emailing each other back and forth.  My first inclination was to check Google wave as I knew it had some LaTeX written scripts for it. However, the scripts are for formulas and not complete documents.  Google Docs is another option where we write the document in LaTeX code, download the document to Continue reading Scribtex: online collaboration for LaTeX

Data and Blogging

Ah Friday, a great day to do final edits on my and Julie's paper for Midwest – also a good time for a quick blog post with a somewhat misleading title as the two subjects refer to two seperate links. First, via Freakonomics, is a competition for the Fraser Institute to have them collect data.  You write up the brief that suggests what they collect and, if you are in the top 6 suggestions, they pay you.  Time to go through my bin of thoughts that usually begins with "If we had data for…" and ends with "we could then Continue reading Data and Blogging

More from SSRN: Publishing Advice for Graduate Students

It appears that I might be a little late to the game judging by the Technorati reactions; however, that will not stop me now or in the near future.  After some initial prompting from Richard Frank, this stellar introductory piece for graduate students posted back in January (universalized for all disciplines) details four avenues for publication: book reviews, conference presentations, articles and replies, and books.  Abstract: Graduate students often lack concrete advice on publishing. This essay is an attempt to fill this important gap. Advice is given on how to publish everything from book reviews to articles, replies to book chapters, and Continue reading More from SSRN: Publishing Advice for Graduate Students